Information is the currency of international trade and commerce which every country trades liberally, and sometimes recklessly. Its true value to others can make it into its own risk, requiring complex processes and technologies to protect from degradation through mismanagement, or from competitive advantage to others through fraud, theft, or technological failure.
In today’s climate of increasingly complex business risks, companies tend to be driven by their information systems and often struggle to develop risk management strategies that are actually aligned with true strategic objectives. Charting and following this strategic course is a challenge to the best organizations. Some of the problems encountered include:
• Understanding how risk requirements are compatible with daily events
• How to prevent these events from happening
• What the real consequences are of not meeting compliance requirements
• How meeting one standard can influence requirements to meet another, seemingly conflicting, requirement
International, compliance &/or regulatory requirements and expectations can constitute a Byzantine labyrinth of leadership risk and responsibility and the effects of erroneous decisions can range from increased costs, reduced profits, and include major risks to the corporate brand and reputation.
To achieve the necessary combination of awareness, flexibility and agility, it is essential that the organization and its leadership encourage an efficient and effective corporate culture. New information systems that generate accurate and relevant metrics about past, current, and future organizational performance must be developed and promoted. New information systems need to be founded upon both control and transparency and these features depend upon a flexible, distributed architecture that enables secure communications, close collaboration, advanced information management, dynamic systems updates and custom client solutions. The objective is to enable users to work in a timely and effective manner, thus reducing overheads and ensuring that they get the information required when needed.
